Read Something Interesting [0] (and its newsletter form Thinking About Things [1]) are great for classic general blog posts.
Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?
#12Used to be a part of forums when those were a thing, which they aren’t anymore.
Today, Hacker News is literally the only site I read the comments on. And I find myself reading the comments more than the submissions.
Maybe there are discords that are good, but I haven’t found any yet and I find that app unpleasant to use
Re: Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?
#13I assume you've tried Reddit except smaller subs, particularly those that ban image posts? The political content and extremely polarised opinions drop away quickly the more niche you get.
Re: Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?
#14It’s really really hard to find sites like this. You might want to try Metafilter. It’s quite nice. https://www.metafilter.com/
You’ll want to avoid Metafilter unless you’re interested in narrow discussions hemmed in by a very specific and limited ideology (think: Foucault, Marx, academia, etc): https://www.metafilter.com/guidelines.mefi
Re: Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?
#15TheMotte.org has good discussion, few links. Lobste.rs has lots of links, less discussion.
I feel like Lobste.rs is just HN Jr. It’s still tech-based.
Re: Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?
#16The comments here are just as mediocre and repetitive as Reddit, just written in a way to sound more sophisticated
Re: Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?
#17I'd love there to be one for broader science. HN serves well, but can be hit and miss in the comments depending on the field and it's degrees of seperation from computer science.
More technical topics end up sinking quick without much discourse. This is in contrast to technical computer science items that do the opposite
Re: Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?
#18https://arstechnica.com Still very nerdy, but less startup- / CS-focused
ARS has returned to its core mission over the past few months which is good. For a while, every other article was Covid related. It was hard to tell if it was a technology or medical website. I'm glad the editors finally figured out who their readers are.
Re: Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?
#19multiple topics, discussed by people who are highly interested in them? Tried 4chan?
In all seriousness, reddit has been declining for years, and I've yet to find anything that scratches the same itch.
Re: Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?
#20If there isn't something like that - maybe we should build it?
That’s not a bad idea. One need to think hard about moderation though. Y Combinator has at least one employee who moderates HN. That’s quite expensive.
Moderation can be solved without hiring people, but it’s not a trivial problem to solve.